The practice of proper hand hygiene has been recognized as an effective way to reduce pathogen transmission in settings such as the health care and food service industries. Hands are one of the main pathways for germ transmission during health care food preparation activities. Despite this, compliance with hand hygiene practices remains low, and improvement efforts tend to lack sustainability. Measuring adherence to hand hygiene practices is therefore important, both to identify where hand hygiene compliance is low, and to determine how compliance may be improved.
However, measuring worker adherence to hand hygiene guidelines is not a simple matter. There is no standardized measure for collecting and reporting rates of hand hygiene compliance. Different organizations may require very different hand hygiene practices. For example, both how and when hand hygiene hand should be performed may vary widely depending upon the type of establishment. In addition, even within an organization, hand hygiene requirements may vary depending upon a person's job role and their likelihood of coming into contact with, and/or transmitting, pathogens.